The potential to create, edit and duplicate application workflows and functionality with greater speed and agility using Power Platform has put advanced automation – including pre-build AP components -- within reach of business leaders from across all areas of the organization. But how do you put the power of Power Platform into practice for your organization?

Historically, organizations have shied away from building an application or buying a tool to optimize a business process or solve a problem because they couldn’t justify the ROI. Today, anyone can build workflows and applications in as little as an few days or even a few hours. 

In a world where the possibilities are endless, how do you take the art of ‘what’s possible’ and transform that into an operationalized processes? 

The Operational Approach to Innovation with Power Platform

In today’s fast-paced digital age, there is never a lack of ideas, but figuring out how to collect those ideas and assign a real value back to the organization can be challenging. 

Following these steps, your company will be able to identify a variety of solutions and then qualify the value to your business through prototyping and testing, as well as adjusting and redeveloping a solution accordingly.  

 

Step 1: Identify Ideas
There is no shortage of great ideas. These ideas come up during collaborative meetings, while focusing on a project alone at our desks, and can irritatingly keep us up in middle of the night until we’ve jotted them down on a pad of paper of in our phone. While the exercise of collecting every and all good ideas is valuable, it’s helpful to organize those ideas by identifying the problem that triggered you to start thinking about solutions in the first place. By creating an abundant list of ideas that address your specific problems, the best ideas will start to emerge more clearly.   

Step 2: Assess Value
Now that you have an abundant list of ways to solve a problem, it’s time to narrow it down. In this stage, everything starts as a good idea, but answering ‘yes’ to the following questions is what makes a good idea a great one. 

• Does this solution bring quantifiable value? 
• Is the value worth the cost? 
• Are resources accessible to develop this idea? 
• Does the idea improve the overall user experience for internal or external users? For example, will the solution drive more customers to view and click on your advertisement, or will it make the workplace more efficient because tasks are automated?

Step 3: Prototype and Test 
Once you have the value determined, prototyping and testing is the next important stage. While the idea may work on paper, once physically implemented there may be unexpected complications. 

Step 4: Determine Where to Invest 
Your great, testable idea may work to fix the current situation, but as the workplace changes, continuous innovation must be considered. Where and how to invest in your solution must be something that is regularly evaluated.

For more details on how to approach innovation in Power Platform, and to watch a real-world demo of how organizations are using Power Platform to innovate today, check out the Microsoft Power Platform demo.